Magyar Egyház, 1958 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1958-11-01 / 11. szám
10 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ cal Seminary, Dr. James McCord who has always been a warmhearted friend of our Church. The Reverend Komjáthy has addressed the student body of Princeton Theological Seminary in behalf of the United Fund Drive which is helping this year, among other Christian projects, the Budapest Theological Seminary. Close to $3,000 will go to help the library of the seminary in Budapest. We are glad, that our men are on the spot to help and to contribute in the ecumenical tasks of the Church Universal and through it, our Mother Church in Hungary. Bishop Zoltán Béky NATIONAL COUNCIL PRESIDENT CALLS FOR NEW BRIDGES The bridges between the nations, the races, the churches, and between man and God must be rebuilt, the Rev. Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg declared in a recent address. Against a background of war’s destruction the National Council of Churches’ president once more pleaded for a Christian program of massive reconciliation. “More bridges between the churches are needed, because we cannot have a united world if the churches continue to be broken and divided.” Saying that Protestants reject the idea of a super-church or some type of “Protestant Vatican”, Dr. Dahlberg pronounced the recent cornerstone-laying of the New Interchurch Center in New York City a historic event “It demonstrates that this unity has solid reality and that Christ is the real cornerstone.” Of all the bridges, the ones between “the soul of man and the heart of God” need quick rebuilding, said Dr. Dahlberg. Blaming communism for its part in destroying some of these bridges, he nevertheless decried “our prayerlessness, biblical illiteracy and neglect of stewardship” as also responsible. “We must make it our purpose to lift the whole human situation into the dimensions of religious faith,” Dr. Dahlberg concluded in his address. New Hungarian Book in English Translation Imre Kadar: The Church in the Storms of Times;— The Reformed Church of Hungary during the periods of the two world wars, revolutions and conterrevolutions. — Budapest 1957. — (To be published in English shortly in Hungary.) After the defeat of the glorious Hungarian revolution there was published a provocative work about the Reformed Church of Hungary. The author of the book, Imre Kadar, once a theatre-director in Transylvania, is an able writer. After the first Commune in Hungary, his satire of Communism (“The Commissar’s Premiere”) was one of the ‘masterpieces’ of this type of literature. He became known in church circles after the World War II. on account of his activities in the “Good Shepherd Evangelical Mission to the Jews”. (By this time, his earlier literary product was no longer referred to.) When this mission work no longer enjoyed the approval of the government, Kadar obtained leading positions at the General Convent of the Reformed Church. He was head of the Foreign and Press Departments; also editor of the “Hungarian Church Press” a foreign language publication of the Protestant Churches in Hungary; and soon became the director of the Convent. Besides these posts he held a chair at the Budapest Reformed Theological Academy and accepted still other positions in the Church. After the collapse of the freedom fight under Russian tanks, it was Imre Kadar who weis willing to sound the voice concerning the recent events. His retrospective glance goes back as far as World War I. It was due to the old sins of omission and commission — according to Kadar — that a “spiritual atomic bomb exploded” in the Church in October 1956. His criticism of the past decades of the Reformed Church in Hungary — from World War I. to 1948 — is cutting and very prejudiced. His unfortunate and unrealistic view sees the source of almost all the errors of these three decades in Dr. László Ravasz, the former bishop, outstanding and well known preacher, who became active once again during the revolution. It was his, Ravasz’, fault that the Church could not fulfil her “prophetic service” between the two World Wars, — according to Kadar. This “prophetic service” might The redecorated chancel of the Carteret church. The redecoration included a new organ, new pulpit, oak wall-panelling of the chancel. The Church Choir received new robes and new hymnbooks were introduced.
